Naz Malik who ran AWEMA, an organisation to support ethnic minorities in Wales, has been accused of corruption by the programme,[color=red] 'Dragon's Eye' This has also been the subject of a court case. He's seen as blatantly practising nepotism in regard to his daughter Tegwen. Allegations of sexual harassment have also emerged.

One enterprising blogger has even accused him of racism. Well, stranger things have happened. Even the Commission for Racial Equality has been accused of racism. Furthermore, the RSPCA was once infiltrated by blood sport enthusiasts.

But I feel this is a category error. The blogger is aggrieved that Malik has concentrated on ethnic minorities, thus neglecting the indigenous Welsh, But as his organisation's remit was to look out for ethnic minorities, it looks as if he was just sticking to his job description.

In my experience, black and brown people, especially those born outside the UK, are highly unlikely statistically to be prejudiced against the Welsh. I've known a fair number of people of African or African Caribbean descent to learn Welsh. I remember a David Singh from a race equality commission representing us after Anne Robinson made her fatuous remarks. I note that at least one Indian restaurant in Cardiff has menus in good idiomatic Welsh.

It seems to me that anti-Welsh racism as such is mostly confined to white inhabitants of the UK as other people are not socialised in it. 'A child says nothing but what it hears by the fire.' I can just think of one particularly unpleasant Burmese woman who was slightly imbued with this. She had been in the UK since she was a year old and may have picked it up from the neighbours.

We're all individuals. Perhaps Malik is hostile to the Welsh, or more likely the British or Europeans generally. But there's really no evidence for this. It's just outrageous mind reading. If he is guilty as charged, we must admire his cunning in hiding his bigotry by calling his daughter Tegwen!

What confuses the issue utterly is that the offended blogger does not approve of people speaking Welsh. In a comment on someone else's blog the same blogger calls a gay politician a fairy and consistently rubbishes political correctness. The same individual sometimes uses misogynist insults in contributions to other people's blogs and is said by others to be 'concerned' about immigrants. Has this character really got a problem with racism?

People are often jealous of ethnic minorities and asylum seekers. They sometimes see them as privileged. In the north of England where my parents live, there is a phenomenon of voluntary apartheid or white flight. The kids don't mix. We knew of one white girl who was resisting going to an integrated school. She complained that 'Asians' were treated like kings and queens. This is fantasy. People don't roll out red carpets in front of them. They're not harassed by paparazzi wherever they go. They're just harassed.

I don't think my children are racist at all because they went to schools in inner city Cardiff where there were children whose parents came from all over the world. But a lot of us were brought up in areas which were mostly racially homogenous and were told a load of rubbish about race by our elders, which we have to try to slough off.

But in recent decades, the idea has grown that to be racist is the worst thing you can possibly be, except for a paedophile. So people will now say things like ''I'm not racist but...I think all these Eskimos should be strung up" or whatever. Perhaps it's good that racism is becoming taboo but it's not good that this is leading to self deception on a massive scale.

There are signs that 'racist' is becoming a dog whistle word which you can use to describe anyone you don't like. It can now even be used to smear someone on whom you are making a jealous and xenophobic attack. The blog in question will be an invaluable resource to those interested in the phenomenon of psychological projection.

Last edited by marianneh on Wed Apr 26, 2017 4:13 pm; edited 1 time in total

we must sit down and I will show the mechanics of how to edit and use the board to the best advantage. You mention a blogger but you provide no link to what you are talking about for us to think about what he has said and what you have said. You have not given us Malik's opinion either which is the normal courtesy to offer anyone before you then go and savage them : it is not necessary to be balanced but it does help others.

To paste in the address of another tab which you have open you typically left click on it with the cursor then right click it to be presented with a menu to left click ' select all ' which will grab anything in the address box and highlight it and then you do the same right click to opt for ' paste ' into the edit boxes.

It also pays it seems to do a belt and braces job on informe.com and copy everything before you click on the ' submit ' button in case it decides that you have logged out whilst you were writing. Just log in again and then use the browser's back button to go back the three pages to the edit box and it should be still there - but if it isn't, use ' paste.'

If you log in you can edit any piece of your own writing years later by going to the top right of a posting and clicking ' edit.'

Well, the blogger in question is very paranoid, so I didn't want to mention them by name in case it had a bad effect on their mental health. I'm not even using pronouns that would reveal their sex. |There's no point in giving them a right to reply. When I did it before, I just got a lot of abuse with no factual content.

I don't know if Naz Malik is guilty of corruption or not. Nor do I care much. I don't know if he's guilty of racism but it's not obviously germane. I just use the story to illustrate how racism is now used as an all purpose insult as with 'Sugar and Slate and all things Great'. In the latter case, I can't even remember the name of the blogger.

You could argue it's unfair to the blogger not to make it clear who they were, but I'm afraid they'd go postal. If you mean there's not enough info to make the post coherent, well, that may be so. It makes perfect sense to me but then I wrote it.

I've just looked up the great man Naz Malik himself, and the facts appear to be in total confusion. It looks as if the trial is still in progress. If he's acquitted, Naz will probably give his version of events later. If not, the facts will probably become clear once he's convicted. I know there's a writer of novels set in medieval Wales -is it Katherine Woodbury? - who does believe that he's been victimised by reactionary nationalists. But this is not to say that he hasn't done anything wrong at all.We just don't know yet.

Um ... could you get more used to placing threads in appropriate places ?

I am in administration mode tonight in order to tidy up the ro-bot attack by ' MMordcoe ' which means an hour or so of tedious deletions.

[ SO I HAVE REACHED IN TO YOUR FIRST POST ON THIS TOPIC TO MAKE YOUR CORRECTION OF ' DRAGONS' DEN ' OBVIOUS : YOU CAN DO THE SAME WHILST LOGGED IN, BY CLICKING ON EDIT AND GOING BACK TO ANY POST TO ADJUST IT TO SAY EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN ]

In theory I can move stuff around into the correct topic areas - but it helps if people post stuff in appropriate places to begin with : I am not keen to act this way, not even with my friends !

I am happy to say that Naz Malik has been cleared on two charges of fraud. It does look quite likely that Katherine Woodbury was right in her view that right wing nationalists were frightened and paranoid about him because he was -well-brown. You have to admire their chutzpah in designating him as racist.

I won't crow too much as there is one count the jury couldn't decide on. We don't know if it will go to retrial yet. Naz Malik is not out of the woods yet, but he has all my best wishes.

To illustrate the point above, I saw a letter in the Western Mail yesterday complaining about how poor downtrodden kids were being forced to learn Welsh in school - but not that they were forced to do Maths or gym. The writer's name was ethnically English as far as I could see.

This evening I heard a little girl who was ethnically Zimbabwean singing happily, ''Penblwydd Hapus'' which she had learnt in school.

Her parents are refugees from Mugabe. She speaks three languages, Welsh, English and Shona.

I am not, of course, saying that Zimbabweans are never racist. Did not Mugabe have a genocidal campaign against the Matabele? Then there are the white farmers who are told, ''Go back to Britain'' although they've never been to Britain.

But the Welsh as a specific group? I think they're a long way down the list of hated people in Southern Africa, whatever their showing in the Zulu War.

And it's much the same in the Indian subcontinent. When the Empire strikes back, it's not us it mainly wants to strike at. On the contrary, some formerly colonised people are big enough to sympathise with us.